122 — Pet Sematary

For this holiday season, we’ve got a gift for you! It’s a box with a cat in it—but you will never know if kitty lives and breathes or not, because this time around, we’re schlepping up the hills and through the pages to get to Stephen King’s mammoth Pet Sematary.

Semi-appealingly dickish young doctor Louis Creed takes us on a tour of Stephen King’s Carnival of American Anxieties! Is my cat less of a man if I get him fixed? Am I? Is it okay if I like my son more than my daughter? Everybody cheats on their spouse, right? Can I just run away from my family? Is my cat super creepy all of a sudden? If I try to climb that fence, am I going to fall on a spike and ruin my balls? Should I tap ancient magic to create abominations in the face of all-conquering death?

It’s all very relatable. Maybe. In any case, it’s Stephen King, it’s slow-building, and it’s extremely, extremely gory. So grab your favorite shovel and get ready to bury what you can’t let go, because it’s long past time for us to take a trip through the works of our Maine man…